Where Rachel Dare
by Jaina Solo2
Summary: Spellmaking 101: Never spell, when you can't smell. RachelIvy. Part one of four.
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** Where Rachel Dare  
**Fandom: **The Hollows aka Kim Harrison 'verse  
**Characters: **Rachel Morgan, Ivy Tamwood, Jenks**  
Category: **Romance, Angst  
**Genre: **Slash  
**Rating: R  
Summary: **Spellmaking 101: Never spell, when you can't smell. Christmas wish list fic for WarpedScientist.  
**Author's Note: **Many thanks to bldydestini. for the beta. This part is angsty. Be patient. **  
Author's Note #2: **Why do the lj usernames hate me and make everything mess up? sobs  
**Spoilers: **Definite spoilers through the events of_For A Few Demons More_.**  
Disclaimer: **These characters belong to Kim Harrison. No copyright infringement is intended.

* * *

"Rachel?" Ivy called out, a moment after I heard the back door shut. "What is that smell?"

"What smell," I called back. It was true. I couldn't smell a thing. A nasty cold had been going around for weeks and I'd finally managed to catch it.

Ivy wrinkled her nose as she walked into the kitchen, ruining her usual serious, aloof look.

"It smells like," she paused and frowned, "Did Skimmer come by?"

"No."

She gave me an odd look before she dropped into a seat at her computer.

Okay, so maybe I had responded a little too quickly and too vehemently to that question, but I hadn't seen Skimmer since she'd helped kill Piscary. I wasn't sure if that was Ivy's decision or her own. I wasn't sure I wanted to know. But there it was.

"No," I repeated in what I hoped was a more normal tone of voice, "The only thing I've been doing is working on a spell." I gestured to the mess stacked behind me that included my favorite spell pot and a variety of brewing ingredients. "I found a new spell that should help my cold go away faster."

Ivy's eyes narrowed. "I thought cold spells were notoriously unreliable."

"Please," I scoffed, "They're coming up with all kinds of new spells everyday, and I've heard this cold spell works great." Ivy was the last person that I'd admit it to, but even I wasn't certain that this would work. She was right. At this point, however, I was willing to try anything to make my head stop pounding.

Ivy muttered something from across the room that I didn't quite catch. It was probably better that I hadn't heard it. Things got more than a little tense when we were both in a bad mood.

Besides, my head was already starting to feel better - lighter and less pound-y. I shivered, and then glanced towards the window. The sun was setting and a chill was settling in to the church.

"I'm going to go get a hoodie, and then I'll be back to cook dinner. What do you want?" I called back to Ivy as I walked away.

I was definitely feeling a lot better all ready. That cold spell was really working fast. Not only was my head feeling lighter, but I was feeling lighter all over. The misery that had been weighing on me all day was lifting away. I pulled the hoodie over my head easily. It hung down past my waist as I headed back to the kitchen.

"Decided what you want," I asked casually, as I pulled the refrigerator door open to see what we had available.

"Rachel." The tone of Ivy's voice made my head shoot up, and the refrigerator door slid shut without me holding it open anymore.

"Ivy." My voice was slow and clear. She was making me nervous. There was only a thin rim of brown left around her eyes, and she was holding her body with impossible stiffness, an unreal stillness.

"Why are you wearing my Piscary's Hoodie," Ivy asked in a choked voice.

My body froze even as I looked quickly down at what I was wearing. I had no idea how I'd gotten her hoodie or why I was wearing it and now I was in big trouble. Wearing a vampire's clothes was a major turn on. If I hadn't learned that from Ivy's dating guide then my own experience with Kist was enough to show me that.

"I don't know," I said slowly. "I'll just take it off." It was the only thing that made sense in that moment. I tugged at the hoodie, pulling it over my head. Cold air hit my stomach as the hoodie tugged my shirt up. I hissed and tugged it back down as I dropped the hoodie onto the counter.

My head, while feeling lighter, was now feeling too light. The room seemed to be spinning around me. The floor was suddenly rushing up at me. Strong arms caught me, jerking me out of my fall, and bringing me back down. Everything was no longer light and floaty. Heaviness came rushing back in, as I suddenly found myself staring into Ivy's eyes.

She'd vamped majorly to get across the room in time to save me from falling and making an ass of myself on the hard linoleum floor of the kitchen. Now there was only inches separating us. With my left hand I reached out to steady myself, holding on to Ivy's bicep. My other hand ghosted over her shoulder, and slid up behind her neck, threading through the short spiky hair there.

"Rachel." Her voice sounded strangled. "What are you doing?"

I tugged lightly until she bent down towards me. "Kissing you," I said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, an instant before my lips touched hers.

Her lips were unmoving against mine, as I kissed her, bruising her lips against mine, until I slowly began to pull away, lightly nipping at her lips as I did. Ivy reacted instantly as I'd intended. My back slammed against the wall, her hand behind me holding me up, as her other hand fumbled for the scar on my neck.

I gasped as her fingers found it and a jolt of pure pleasure shot through me. "Ivy," I breathed her name, reaching for her and pulling her closer, until she was pressed up against every inch of me.

My eyes met hers. They were totally black.

Still she held herself a little bit a part. "I warned you, Rachel." Her voice was deep enough to be a growl, but ended up sounding closer to a purr.

A shiver ran down my spine. "I remember," I mumbled, and I did remember. Vaguely. Something.

My hand slipped under Ivy's t-shirt, and found skin, beautifully smooth wonderful skin. It was that motion that stripped away the last vestiges of Ivy's control. Her lips fell to my shoulder, her tongue tracing the edges of my demon scar. My head fell back against the wall, giving Ivy better access. The blunt edge of her teeth scraped across the scar and I almost passed out from the sensation, pain turning instantly into pleasure. I could hardly think as her teeth sank into my skin easily, her lips pressing into the skin lightly around the bite mark.

I lost myself in Ivy, giving myself over to her, and trusting her completely with everything.

* * *

My head was pounding. Worse than pounding. The whole world seemed to be throbbing with agony.

I opened my eyes and flinched at the brightness of the sun. It had to be almost sunset by now. How long had I slept? Jenks and I had a run scheduled for later in the day that I couldn't afford to miss. Jenks was even scarier as a landlord than my previous one had been.

I shifted, rolling my legs off of the bed to stand up, and froze. There was an arm around my waist. It clung tighter to me. My hand unconsciously flew to my neck. Pain blossomed as my fingers hit the fresh puncture marks. Unlike last time these were smooth, and clean. I shivered as the pain muted, and turned into another kind of ache.

"Rachel," Her voice was muted and sleepy as Ivy murmured my name. Her hand stroked lazily down my back and I instinctively moved into the touch until my head caught up with my body.

"Ivy?" Horror filtered into my voice and I jumped out of bed, dragging the sheet up and around me as I stumbled towards the wall, putting myself as far away from Ivy as I could.

By the Turn, what had we done last night?

Ivy lazy rolled toward me. I swallowed hard against the pounding in my head as I saw her completely naked, sprawled across the bed. She looked sleepy and sated lying there and not at all like the sleek, graceful predator that she had been last night.

I was in so far over my head, fear was cutting through my confusion and my heart was beginning to race. Ivy's eyes snapped open, clear and brown. It was still early enough in the day that not even a hint of black showed in them.

"Rachel." Ivy's voice was different from just a moment ago, flat and devoid of emotion. "It's okay," she said soothingly, holding out her hand to me. "Come back to bed, dear heart."

Panic was surging up in me.

"No - I - what did we do?"

Realization was only, slowly dawning on Ivy. "Rachel, don't you remember what happened last night?"

"No," I said with a shake of my head. Or maybe I did, I reconsidered, as an image of Ivy bent over me, worshiping my body, flashed through my mind.

"You're the one who wanted to find a blood balance with me," she pointed out. "You kissed me."

"Yeah." I had kissed her. I'd also been wearing her hoodie. How had that happened? I certainly hadn't done it on purpose and we were careful enough that it wouldn't have happened by accident.

Ivy sat up and I shrank further back against the wall. In my haste to get out of the bed, I'd gotten out on the farthest side from the door, leaving Ivy between me and my exit.

Ivy sniffed the air and, moving slowly and deliberately, got out of bed. She stepped around it, moving towards me. I fought to stay still, struggling not show how scared I really was. I flinched as she bent over to pick up my discarded shirt. She looked at me pointedly as she stood up and I winced at the pain that I'd seen in her expression.

I'd learned within the first few weeks of living with Ivy just how easy it was to hurt her. It was something I hated to see more every time it happened.

I raised an eyebrow as she sniffed at my shirt and then dropped it. Ivy seemed to crumple inwards and almost fell to a seat on the bed.

"Ivy?" I took an unconscious step towards her. Even scared and confused, seeing Ivy like this still tugged at my heart.

"You messed up that cold spell."

I fell back at the anger in her voice.

"So what? I feel better this morning." I matched her anger with belligerence. It was an old routine for us.

"You mixed up a lust spell, Rachel, not a cold spell." She stood with vamp speed, moving jerkily as she paced, and far too fast to be a normal human. I hated it when she did that. It also showed just how nervous Ivy was. "That's why I thought I smelled another vampire here last night."

Stunned realization flooded over me. There was a reason why every witch was warned not to mix a spell when she couldn't smell.

"Oh god." I sank to the floor across from Ivy.

Immediately she was in front of me, worry clear in her eyes. She reached out to me and then snatched her hand back before she could touch me as if she'd been burned.

"Are you-" She couldn't seem to think of what I might be.

I just shook my head. This was all too much.

Ivy slowly wrapped her arms around herself, and suddenly she looked impossibly small huddled in front of me.

"You promised you wouldn't leave."

"I know."

And I did. I had promised. But I'd also managed to screw this up worse than I could possibly imagine.

"Rachel!" Jenks panicked yell cut through the tension. "Where in Tink's Disney Mansion are you?"

(1/4)


	2. Chapter 2

**Part Two**

"Jenks?" 

Ivy's head whipped around to face the door and we both scrambled for it, our problems, and our current lack of dress forgotten in an instant at the utter fear in Jenks' yell.

"We're in here, Jenks," I yelled, glancing around frantically for a sight of the tiny pixie, or even a trail of pixie dust. "What's wrong?"

I stopped abruptly, as Ivy jerked to a halt in front of me and barely missed running into her back. I hopped up, trying to catch a glimpse of what had made her stop over her shoulder. I caught a quick glimpse of Jenks on my second hop.

He was fluttering at Ivy's eye level, pixie dust falling from him in a cloud. "It's Matalina. She's-" He couldn't finish the sentence. "You've got to help her, Rache. You've got to be able to do something to help her. If you don't..."

I froze. There was no other word for it. I had known that Matalina hadn't been doing well for quite some time, but I didn't know that she had gotten this bad. I didn't know anything about healing spells for pixie's. Obviously, I barely knew anything about healing spells for witches, but for Jenks I would try my best.

"Can you bring her in here, Jenks," Ivy asked, momentarily taking charge of the situation and giving me another minute to get myself together. I had to do this. I'd promised Jenks that I'd find away to save them both from a far too early death. I couldn't let the beautiful, tiny pixie woman that I'd become very fond of die.

"Yeah. Yeah, we can do that," Jenks repeated, relief flooding into his voice. His voice rose into a pitch that I couldn't hear as he called to his kids to get them to help move their mother inside.

The moment that Jenks was out of the room, Ivy turned to me. 

"Do you know what you're doing?"

"No," I admitted quietly. "I have no idea." Panic was edging into my voice as I started breathing harder.

"Rachel," Ivy caught my shoulders. "Calm down." Normally I'd be freaking out with Ivy this close to me, touching me, but now it seemed to center me and calm me down. Damn vamp hormones, luring their victim into a false sense of calm.

I took a deep breath. "Okay, I can do this." 

Ivy dropped her eyes from mine, and let her hands fall away. I ignored the shiver that went through me as her fingers trailed down my arm.

"Clothes," I blurted out, "Can you get us clothes, while I get my spellbook. I need to-" I gestured towards the kitchen. 

Red flushed Ivy's pale cheeks. "I can do that," Ivy nodded and disappeared back towards our rooms, as I headed for the kitchen.

I pulled my two most likely spellbooks down and began quickly thumbing through them, looking for anything that might have a chance of working.

"Here," Ivy handed me a robe. I tried to keep my sigh of relief to a minimum when I noticed that the robe she'd handed me was my own and I tried not to look at the way her black silk robe clung to her skin, hugging her curves and dipping dangerously low on her chest. I groaned, and jerked my eyes away from the tantalizing skin that I now knew lay underneath it.

Damn Ivy for bespelling me. 

"It wasn't against your will, Rachel." Ivy had been so silent that I jumped, having forgotten her presence just there behind me.

"I wasn't exactly in my right mind, Ivy," I snapped. "I was under the influence of a lust spell." 

"Lust spells don't change what you lust after, or what you're feeling. It just deepens those feelings. You should know that better than anyone, witch."

I whirled to glare at her, and stopped as I saw Jenks and his kids bringing Matalina in through the hole in the kitchen window. "Can you give me a minute," I asked none too tactfully, gesturing between the sheet still wrapped around me and the robe she'd brought me.

Ivy folded her arms over her chest, and slowly turned to walk away. 

Hastily, I fumbled with the sheet and robe, trying not to drop one before I got into the other one. Just as soon as I'd shrugged the robe on I followed Ivy into the church's living area, where the pixies were using an old handkerchief to lower Matalina to the coffee table.

I dropped to my knees in front of it, as Jenks lowered himself to stand next to her. He knelt, and bent over her, picking up one of her hands and holding it over his heart.

"Matalina? Can you hear me? Is there anything I can do to help you?" It was the duty of a Pixy wife to patch up her husband when he was injured. It was a duty that Pixy women took very seriously, and she would be the one to know the most about healing a severely injured or dieing Pixie.

"There is nothing you can do, Rachel," She rasped. 

She squeezed Jenks hand in hers. "There's nothing that can be done. It's too late."

"No," Jenks sobbed, "There has to be something. Rachel can-" He looked up at me helplessly. 

Matalina shook her head. "I'm past the reach of any spell that she could create, Dear One." She pulled him closer. "Take care of our children," she whispered.

Jenks nodded. He looked too choked with tears to be able to speak. Her wings fluttered one last time and then fell limp and still against the table top.

My breath hitched as I saw her tiny chest stop moving. Without thinking I reached back, and caught Ivy's hand. Her fingers pressed into mine with almost painful strength. Just the simple contact with her gave me the strength to reach out to Jenks, carefully putting a finger on his back.

His children settled slowly to the coffee table around them silently. The scene was made all the more eerie by the silence and stillness of the pixie children.

"Jenks."

His wings fluttered, clattering sharply against one another in dismissal. He swiped a hand across his face, wiping away tears.

"We have to get her ready," He said slowly. "Jhan," He called to his oldest remaining son. "Go get your sister and bring her back. Take some of the younger kids to watch her garden. We need her to help get your mother ready."

Jhan pulled himself up and launched himself off of the table with slow dignity. Pixie dust shimmered down behind him as he rose.

Jenks gestured to the rest of his kids. Slowly they picked their mother gently up and begin to carry her back out to their home.

"Jenks, let us know if there's anything -"

Air brushed across my cheek as he flitted past my face for a second time. "Thanks, Rache." I'd never heard the usually exuberant pixie sound so destroyed. "Will you be there when we put her to rest? Both of you," He added as he looked to Ivy.

She nodded and I added my own nod quickly. It was the least we could do to be there for him. 

Ivy stood and walked into the kitchen. I hesitated. After living with Ivy for this long, I knew better than to follow her when we were in the middle of an argument or a particularly tense moment. I wasn't sure that this qualified, but I didn't want to be alone at the moment either.

Ivy was seated at her computer when I slowly walked through the door. There was no doubt that she'd noticed me come in, but she didn't shift her attention from her computer screen. I grabbed the orange juice from the fridge and started the coffee. It could have been any other morning if not for the sense of surrealness hanging over everything.

I waited until the coffee had finished dripping down and then poured two cups - one for me and the second for Ivy. I walked over to her computer and set the mug of coffee down on the desk next to her. Ivy gave me a glimpse of her brown eyes for an instant and then looked back to her computer. Slowly she picked up the mug and brought it carefully to her lips.

The sight of her lips against the mug, brought back a memory of the night before and her lips on my neck, sucking, drawing sensations out of me that I hadn't even thought possible. Unconsciously my had went to my neck. Ivy's head snapped around as my fingers touched my scar.

"Don't do that," She snapped, a rim of black instantly enveloping the usual brown of her eyes. "Don't do that unless you're serious, Rachel. I can't take it if you're not."

"Ivy..."

"No," She shot to her feet, tipping her chair over behind her. I'd never seen her move so clumsily as she turned and fled out into the late afternoon sun.

Angrily, I swiped at the tears falling down my cheek and turned away.

(2/4)


	3. Chapter 3

**Part Three**

"You know, Rache," Jenks slurred as he lurched up against the jar of honey that he'd been dipping from, "You really are stupid sometimes."

I glanced down at the tiny, four inch pixie, as he leaned up against the jar, and dipped another mouthful of honey out, letting it drip down into his mouth. It vaguely resembled a frat boy with his beer funnel.

"Thanks, I think," I grimaced as I slumped into a chair at the table. The table that Ivy was conspicuously absent from and had been for the past week. Or at least as long as I was around. She'd been spending as much time with Jenks as I had. Without discussing it - mainly because we hadn't spoken - we'd been keeping an eye on Jenks, never leaving him alone except for with his kids. Jih had even been over several times, leaving her fiance to keep an eye on her garden to spend time with her dad.

It had been making me thinking about losing my dad a lot more than usual. At least Jenks seemed to be pulling himself together better than Mom had coped, although he had been hitting the honey pretty hard lately.

I was planning to cut him off after he finished this jar.

In a shower of pixie dust, Jenks fluttered up towards me, weaving through the air unsteadily as he tried to fly drunk. He hovered in front of my face just a little too closely, making my eyes cross a little as I tried to keep in focus.

"'M serious," he slurred. "Tink's knickers, Rache, I'm jealous."

"Of what?" I was genuinely puzzled. Jenks might be a four inch pixie with dozens of kids, but his life was always so much less screwed up than mine.

"Of you and Ivy." The Stupid was clearly implied and didn't need to be stated.

"Me and Ivy?" I shot straight up in my chair, dropping the bracelet that Kisten had given me that I'd been idly running through my fingers. "What do you know about me and Ivy?"

"Relax, Rache," Jenks backwinged lazily and almost smacked into the cabinet. I darted out a hand to catch him before he could fall to the counter top. A moment later, I spilled him out of my hand and into the napkin holder, his favorite place to sleep off a honey binge.

"I don't know anything except for what she's told me." He smirked. "And what I could smell. Couldn't believe you finally did it though," he rambled on, apparently oblivious to the blush flushing my face and the anger creeping in behind the embarrassment. "Ivy's tore up about the lust spell. Can't believe she slept with you while you were under the influence. Couldn't really believe it myself, but it's about time. Took you long enough to realize that you were in love with her."

"What? No." My denial was immediate and instinctive. "You know I've been wanting to find a blood balance with her for almost a year now, and I was under the influence of a lust spell!"

"Lust spells don't make you lust after something you don't want, Rache." Jenks' voice was rapidly loosing its sing-song quality as he began to quickly sober up, his high, pixie metabolism kicking in.

The similarity of his words to the one's the Ivy had spoken almost a week ago now brought me up short. I wasn't sure what to say to that. I wasn't sure what I wanted.

"I thought you were crazy for wanting to find a blood balance with her, Rachel," Jenks said slowly, "But I never doubted that you loved her. Ivy's not trying to control you as her shadow. She's shown that by not going near you, not forcing your hand at all." He smirked. "Besides she knows you too well to try." He hiccuped and tried to look serious again. "All I'm saying is to think about it before you make a decision. Ivy balances you and a relationship could be good for both of you."

I gazed fondly down at the pixie, who had become so much more than just back up. He was someone that I trusted with my life, and more. He was family.

I still had no idea what I'd do about Ivy, but I appreciated Jenks advice.

"Thanks, Jenks," I tried to put everything that I was feeling into my voice. With anyone else I would have just given them a hug and called it a day; pixies presented a challenge. Maybe that was why I liked them so much.

Trying to talk to Ivy proved to be harder than I'd expected. Days of avoiding her had put us in a pattern that was hard to break. Any time that I managed to be home, she managed not to be.

It was three days before I got stubborn and decided to force the issue. It hadn't worked out with the best results for Ivy and I in the past, but that was when we'd been dancing around sharing blood. Hopefully we were past that now. Hopefully we could decide what we wanted from our relationship now without that distraction.

Hopefully I could figure out just what I wanted from her. All I knew was that I didn't want to lose Ivy. I couldn't. She'd become more important to me than anyone else in my world. If she hadn't, I wouldn't have stayed her roommate as long as I'd had.

Ivy had griped for years that I was impulsive - too impulsive for my own good - but I wasn't like her. I couldn't sit and plan endlessly, so I went about talking to Ivy in the most direct possible way.

I went into her bedroom and waited. I hadn't been there since the night we'd spent together and even then it had been the first time I'd ever spent much time in there. Avoiding Ivy's personal space had always been a common courtesy, part of my effort to keep from having my blood drained.

This was a direct and obvious challenge, something I'd been tried to avoid between Ivy and I for a very long time now.

I wasn't avoiding anymore; now I was confronting head on.

Tucking one leg up underneath me, I sank into place on the bed. The whole room was a reflection of Ivy. Sturdy, solid wood furniture, beautiful and probably hand carved. Classy, elegant, and most definitely highly expensive. In fact, there was a good chance that some of the things in this room where centuries old family heirlooms.

I shook my head, not for the first time, and the radical differences between us. There was a brush, a bottle of a hair gel, and make up sitting on the dresser. It was all neatly organized and lined up rows on the dresser, not tossed haphazardly in a basket like on mine.

Motion caught my eye and I turned to look. Ivy stood framed in the doorway. She'd stopped abruptly, and stood with one foot balanced over the entrance.

"Rachel." She breathed my name. For an instant I saw a rim of black appear around her black eyes and then she blinked and it was gone. She took a step back, a pained look crossing her face. "What are you doing here?"

I stood, reaching a hand back to steady myself as I did. I could feel the fear rushing through me, my pulse starting to race as my heart hammered in my chest. I wanted this conversation to happen. I was making it happen, but if I screwed this up... I wasn't sure that Ivy and I could recover, and of all the things I was confused about, that was one thing I knew I didn't want to happen.

"I wanted to talk to you."

Fear was something Ivy knew about, probably knew too much about and she could smell it all over me. Her fists clenched and she looked away. She turned slowly and started to walk away.

"Ivy, don't." I called after her. "Please."

The last word made her freeze.

"Don't run away from me."

"I can't do this, Rachel," she blurted the words out, her voice cracking over my name.

"You can do anything you want to," I shot back. It was true, though. It was also one of the first things I'd come to respect about Ivy when we'd been partners. I'd grown to respect it even more when I'd had an opportunity to see first hand the restraint she exercised over every aspect of her life.

"Not this," she countered, sounding more defeated than I'd ever heard her. "I can't be here with you after everything that we shared, and not have it mean anything. I can't, Rachel."

"Ivy," I moved towards her, but she was stumbling out of the room. I didn't have a chance as she moved with vamp speed. "Damn it, Ivy, you have to give me a chance!"

I followed her into the kitchen, where she was seated at the table. Her computer was on, but she hadn't touched it. She refused to meet my eyes.

"A chance for what, Rachel?"

"I just want a chance to make things work."

"I can't share blood with you without sex." She held herself stiff, didn't allow a hint of emotion into her voice. "Piscary broke me, Rachel."

"I don't want you to just take my blood, Ivy." I hadn't known I was going to say it until it was said. I hesitated for a moment, thinking, making sure I wasn't lying, to myself and to Ivy, just to keep her there. I couldn't. It would kill us both.

I wrapped my arms around my waist and looked up from the edge of the circle carved into the linoleum that I'd been scuffing at with my toe.

"I love you, and I want to see if we can make this work."

Ivy looked as if she couldn't quite believe what I'd said. Slowly, as if afraid that this would all disappear, she held a hand out to me. I stepped away from the counter to take it. She tugged on my hand and I fell down into her lap, exactly as she'd intended.

She let go of my hand and slipped one arm around my waist holding me close. A shiver of nervousness ran through me. Everything seemed to be different with Ivy and I'd never been this close to her like this before.

I wound my arms around her neck, letting my wrist brush against where I knew she had a scar on her neck. She shuddered underneath me, and pulled me even closer.

She tilted her head to kiss me, pressing her lips against mine, sucking gently on my lower lip. I pressed back into the kiss, loosing myself in the sensation. Her hand caressed my own scar.

"God, Ivy," I hissed, dropping my head back and loosing myself in the moment. She didn't say anything; there was no need. Everything she could have said was spoken with every kiss, every touch, every caress of her hands on my body.

This was perfection. Why had I spent so long fighting it?

(3/4)


	4. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

"Rachel." A wisp of air brushed over my cheek. _"Rachel."_ The soft voice repeated my name with a bit more urgency. I rolled onto my side, curling inwards. My arms ran into something solid and my eyes flickered open.

I blinked in the dim light of my room. It was early, far too early in the day for me to be awake. The soft light of early morning was still filtering through the windows.

I tilted my head until I could look into Ivy's unblinking eyes. They were dark, only a hint of brown in the black depths, but what had frightened me for so long no longer did. It was a sign of desire - Ivy's desire for me, and that was certainly nothing to be frightened of.

Meeting my eyes, Ivy smirked slightly as she ran her short, close cut nails lightly down my arm, until she gently picked up my hand and wrapped my fingers through hers. Keeping her eyes locked on mine, she raised my hand to her lips and pressed a light kiss to the back of it.

I shivered at the feel of her mouth on my skin. She let out a low chuckle at my response. I frowned and resisted the urge to stick my tongue out at her. I wasn't used to this side of Ivy, playful and open, but I had a feeling it was something that I could get used to very quickly.

I saw a flash of surprise on her face as I leaned in closer to her. I rubbed my cheek against hers and dropped my head down to rest on her shoulder, breathing in her scent. For once the thought of all the calming, arousing pheromones surging through me didn't bother me in the slightest. I couldn't resist pressing a light kiss on the base of her neck and then sprawled onto my back.

Ivy followed me until she was straddling my hips.

"You woke me up," I mumbled as I raised my arms to circle her waist.

"I couldn't help it," she said softly. "You were sleeping and I wanted to talk to you."

"Oh," I struggled to bring my mind out of the fuzzy, still half asleep state that it was currently in. "What did you want to talk about?"

"I wanted to ask you something." Ivy paused. "I couldn't wait until the morning." She bit her lip, and suddenly I was worried.

Ivy was looking nervous, and that was making me nervous.

"What," I blurted out. "Is something wrong? Did I-"

Ivy flashed me a grin and put a finger over my lips to silence me, but when she had my silence once again her nervousness returned. She leaned over me slowly, her short hair falling forward around her face, before she kissed me, enveloping my mouth with hers. I lost myself into the kiss until I was breathless and panting. I'd never imagined that it could be this good with Ivy. I never had a clue.

"I love you, Rachel Mariana Morgan," Ivy spoke slowly and softly. "And I wanted to ask you something," she repeated. "Don't think you have to answer now; don't think you have to say yes."

"Ooookaaay," I drawled slowly, the worry that had been erased by her kiss, now slamming back into me.

"Will you be my scion?"

I blinked up at her, words deserting me. Of all the things that Ivy could have asked, I hadn't expected for it to be this.

"Ivy..." The enormous responsibility of what she was asking overwhelmed me. When the idea meant more than I thought I could handle, the answer had been easy and clear cut. Now it was murky and uncertain. The thought of being held responsible for someone else's life and complete and total well-being after their death was enough to fill me with fear. And if I couldn't find a way to keep Ivy's soul intact, well it wasn't something I'd be able to deal with. The thought of doing that all for Ivy..

"You don't have to answer now," she repeated quickly, worry creasing her face. She thought I would refuse and yet she'd asked anyway. It was incredibly brave; I wasn't sure that I could have done the same thing in her place.

"Ivy," I slid my arms up, tugging her upper body down and pulling her closer to me, until her body was pressing up against every inch of mine. "I'm scared. I'm scared of loosing myself in you. I'm scared of not knowing that I've lost myself."

She opened her mouth, and it was my turn to press a finger to her lips, silencing her.

"But above everything else, I trust you." I couldn't hold back the smile that was suddenly threatening to split my face. "And I love you. So yes, I will be your Scion."

Ivy stilled in my arms. Only the feeling of her heart beating against my chest told me that she was still alive.

"Rachel." Her voice was full of wonder as she breathed my name. "Thank you."

The look in her eyes made me blink. I'd never seen anyone look at me that way before. Her eyes were filled with the purest love and trust that I'd ever seen. It was a far cry from the usual broken cynicism that she usually showed. The thought of every doing something to betray that trust made my heart ache. I would simply have to make sure that never happened.

Ivy had spent years protecting me, now it was my turn. Not simply to protect her body, but something far easier to break - her heart. As long as it was mine, I would do my best to make sure that never happened.

(4/4)


End file.
